Hundreds of innocent people may be in prison based on faulty forensic evidence, yet the FBI never alerted those prisoners, their attorneys or the courts about the error, a joint investigation by the Washington Post and “60 Minutes†reported. For about 40 years, the FBI believed that the lead in bullets had unique chemical signatures, and that it was possible to match that lead to a single box of bullets. But that isn’t true. In fact, it’s statistically possible that lead from a bullet can have tens of millions of matches. After the FBI learned about this mistake a few years ago, it sent out a form letter saying that it was stopping the test, but it didn’t admit that the evidence from the lab was wrong, and it didn’t advise the Justice Department to review cases in which this evidence was instrumental in a conviction.
Because of the media investigation, the FBI is finally launching a review of these cases and plans to notify prosecutors of the faulty analysis. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Innocence Network also are creating a task force to review these cases.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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18 Comments
It’s revelations like this one that prompt my continued problems with the death penalty. Our system is SUPPOSED to be that a thousand guilty go free before one innocent is wrongly punished.
Clearly it aint working.
Picky, picky, picky.
Let’s say that you’ve lost a loved one in a horrific murder.
Every day and night you have to think about that lost.
Are you going to get all concerned about which particular black man pulled the trigger?
*****
BTW, for the humor-impaired, that was satire from “Ask a Republican” Richard Martin.
http://www.askarepublican.com/Welcome.html
The same people who gripe about the jury decision in the McDonald’s coffee case are the ones who stand up and defend a jury’s decision to invoke the death penalty.
There are all too many examples of the justice system gone wrong. And I’m here to tell people there are some criminals I think should be taken out into the street and shot like the rabid dogs they are.
Do those rabid dogs have the right to live? Nope. But do you or I have the right to kill them, knowing how many breaches of justice are possible?
Perhaps, if the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury that imposes the death penalty were to be subject to execution themselves if later evidence proved a convict innocent, folks would have second thoughts about the death penalty.
I, for one, would probably still vote for the death penalty for Charlie Manson, O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rader… any number of defendants.
But if there’s no redress for injustice, there is no justice.
And the death penalty provides no redress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbR9FzqpIrQ
Sounds like a big OOOps.
“OOOps?” Tell that to the innocent guy who’s been rotting in jail for 40yrs, and he may become a murderer yet!
Their fingerprint analysis is suspect too.
And ya know something?
I don’t particularly resent District Attorneys and Prosecutors doing everything in their power to achieve a conviction.
Anybody who knows anything about crime realizes most people charged with crimes are guilty.
But the virtually-unlimited power of the State against an individual makes the scales of justice unbalanced from the start.
When Prosecutors are faced with a defendant, it’s their job to achieve a conviction. It’s not their job to achieve justice.
Except, y’know, it should be.
I suppose the FBI will rank the review in accordance with the ‘caliber’ of the cases. :)
I always wondered about that Metallurgy analysis, I would think the lead was smelted in a gigantic batch, and would therefore have the same characteristics as thousands of other bullets.
Ummmm Just for the record — O. J. was determined to be Not Guilty by a jury… I dont think we ought to be going around executing folks found Not Guilty by a jury! We seem to have enough troubles executing those who have been found Guilty!
And what O. J. is charged with now in Nevada is not a death penalty case!
Good one kansas!
;^)
“When Prosecutors are faced with a defendant, it’s their job to achieve a conviction. It’s not their job to achieve justice.”
Not true MH. Their mandate is justice. That is why if they have exculpatory evidence they are required to reveal it. In that sense they are very different fromdefense.
Another aspect of this – when we jail an innocent that means the guilty is still free.
Well great a lot of people died due to a bullet… (ever seen the movie- Clue)
Yet I will say I love the pun (good JOB) maybe.. lol
Has anyone here read “The Innocent Man, Murder and Injustice in a Small Town” by John Grisham?
Our justice system is good but there are conflicts within it. Though the prosecutors job is to seek justice, sometimes the pressure for a conviction can bend the focus of the trial, just as the pressure for hard evidence to convict a defendant can result in some evidence to the contrary failing to be passed on to the prosecutor.
It is very unlikely that someone will be sentenced to hard time or get the death penalty if they have the money and the big name attorneys of O. J. Simpson. However, to the former teenage gang banger who was grabbed off the street in the vicinity of a drive by and given a public defender the possibility of being wrongly convicted is much greater.
All of us face the possibility of being incorrectly charged, though it is more likely that we are wrongly accused of speeding or running a stop sign, or denied a job because of a false positive on a drug test.
Justice should be blind to everything but the evidence. When we can’t trust the people who are supposed to present and interpret the evidence there is no justice.
If we could get water boarding accepted as an interrogation technique, we could be sure we get the right person if the confess! Move over Pol Pot.
The whole justice system in this country is screwed up. just in Wichita you have case where a woman who stole 160′000 got a 60day sentance, while a guy walks out of QT with a hotdog is charged with a felony and sits in Jail 70 days. How many Duke rape case, like cases go on each year but because the clients aren’t wealthy they dont have access to good lawyers, And generally wealth buys one out of trouble.